“My dear father, you must admit that love and marriage are two very different things. Love is divine, marriage is human.”
“But——”
“Marriage is not a divine ordinance. It is a respectable human institution contrived for the comfortable existence of society.”
“I am thinking of Minna’s children.”
“So am I.”
“She will lose them.”
“That is her affair. Anything is better for them than being brought up in a house with a man and a woman who hate each other.”
“I can’t admit that.”
“As a matter of principle, perhaps not; as a matter of practice, you will, just as you took over Frederic’s mess. . . .”
“How did that turn out?”